Real Estate Agent SEO

Are you tired of wasting money on a website that doesn’t bring in any traffic from Google? Many real estate agents believe that simply creating a website will make it magically be found by search engines. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Many real estate websites are crawled by Google but never indexed. If you’re a REALTOR, local brokerage, or real estate franchise, gaining organic traffic to your website is more important than ever. So how can you make sure your website gets the attention it deserves?

At BrokerLEAD, we do this by making your website more visible to Google is essential to rank higher on search engine results pages. We do this by creating valuable, relevant content on your website. This includes adding blog posts, infographics, videos, and other types of content regularly. Additionally, we improve your website’s ranking by building links from high-quality websites and sharing your content on social media platforms.

 

What is Real Estate SEO?

The goal of SEO for real estate is to have your website appear in Google search results. There are two types of real estate SEO: Local SEO, which gets you listed on Google Business, and traditional SEO, which targets people searching for homes in a certain city. Queries like *city* homes for sale belong to traditional SEO, and “REALTOR near me” would be Local SEO.

With the internet becoming increasingly important in the real estate world, SEO will continue to be very important for your website. The Coronavirus Pandemic has also demonstrated the importance of having a solid online presence. If your website is not found for widely searched real estate terms by people in your region, you are losing out on business.

When ranking a real estate website, many REALTORS are unaware of what is required. However, by following some fundamental stages and using best practices for real estate SEO, we can optimize your website to rank higher in search results.

 

SEO for real estate agents

How We Optimize Your Real Estate Website

If you find real estate search engine optimization challenging to understand, don’t worry–we can simplify it for you.

Real Estate SEO 101

When it comes to real estate SEO, it can be more competitive and present some unique challenges. However, many of the same stages involved in ranking regular websites still apply. The process outlined here can help real estate agents, brokers, and franchises acquire the organic search results they need for traffic and lead creation.

The following is not a collection of real estate SEO tips but rather the entire process of ranking a real estate website. We use these principles to help your site achieve the visibility it needs to drive leads and traffic.

The First Step is Local SEO for Real Estate Website

It is more vital than ever to rank your real estate website locally. Google has been investing a lot in its Google Business Profile infrastructure, and it adds new features regularly. They recently changed the name from Google My Business to Google Business Profile. We anticipate several new features coming soon, and you may check out any updates on our blogs.

Real estate is always a local business, especially when it comes to internet marketing. You need to ensure your website ranks well in your local area to get the most out of your investment.

Our first step in building your local SEO is creating and claiming your Google Business Profile listing. This will notify Google about your company name, brand, phone number, and address. That is referred to as your NAP by digital marketing specialists (Name, Address, Phone Number). A crucial element of this process is ensuring your NAP is consistent with your Google Business Profile account and other online platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and, most importantly, your website.

Creating and validating your Google Business Profile account is just the beginning – we also want to create citations on other websites. A citation is an online mention of your business, and it’s essential to ensure that all of your citations have the same name, address, and phone number (NAP) as your Google Business Profile. This will help your real estate business rank higher in local search results. Sites like Facebook, Yelp, Yellow Pages, and Foursquare are all great places to create citations for your business. There are literally thousands of potential citation sites, so we need to choose the most relevant ones to your business. Creating citations can be a time-consuming task, but it’s well worth the effort if you want

Real Estate SEO Keywords

The fact is that adding real estate keywords as meta tags to your website won’t automatically result in better rankings – this is something many broker-supplied agent websites try to convince people of, but it’s simply not true. To rank higher in search engines like Google, you need a comprehensive SEO strategy that includes keyword research. First, we determine what you want to rank for (these are known as “main keywords”), and then we need to focus on creating high-quality content that will rank well for those terms.

What Real Estate Keywords Should You Use?

The apparent keywords to include in your ad are “your city” real estate or “your city” houses for sale. Do not target the most popular keywords. In many cases, the most searched terms are not necessarily the ones you should be targeting. Instead, we focus on keywords that are less popular but still relevant to your city’s real estate market. This will help you attract more targeted leads interested in what you have to say.

Low Hanging Fruit Keywords

There’s a lot of competition for keywords with a lot of traffic, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find success by targeting less popular terms. Our real estate SEO experts put in a bit more work to find the right ones. We can identify keywords your clients are searching for that are of special value in your area. 

Keyword Research for Real Estate Industry

True Real Estate SEO professionals will explore beyond conventional “homes for sale” searches. We also evaluate latent semantic keywords to ensure that your material is correctly seeded.

Your keyword research should cover the obvious terms and their variations. *Your city* + homes for sale, for example, should additionally include:

We explore beyond conventional “homes for sale” searches. Look into latent semantic keywords to make sure your material is correctly seeded.

Keyword research should cover not only the apparent terms but also their variations. “Your city” + homes for sale, for example, could include:

  • “your city + state” homes for sale
  • homes for sale in *your city + state abbreviation*
  • real estate in *your city*
  • *your city + state abbreviation* for sale
  • homes for sale in *your city*
  • *your city + state abbreviation* real estate
  • *your city* real estate for sale
  • real estate *your city*
  • *your city* real estate
  • real estate for sale *your city*
  • similar search phrases with subdivisions
  • all of the above with the state abbreviation
  • similar search phrases with counties

Keyword research is the process of finding out which words and phrases people are searching for on the internet. Each of these keywords has a different monthly search volume, level of competition, and purpose.

As Google’s algorithm continues to evolve at breakneck speed, the relationship between keyword research and user intent is more important than ever. Currently, Google’s BERT algorithm will be utilized on practically all queries. BERT is an artificial intelligence upgrade that helps Google interpret a search query more accurately.

What are the differences in user intent when searching for *city* real estate as opposed to *subdivision* beachfront condos for sale? It’s no secret that when people search for just “real estate,” their intent can vary greatly depending on what they’re looking for. For example, when someone searches for “city” real estate, they might look for statistics on the local market or general information about real estate in that city. On the other hand, when someone searches for “condos for sale,” they’re probably looking for active listings in a specific condominium community.

Complete a Website Audit

SEO website assessment can be a daunting task. Our BrokerLEAD team will dive deeply into your site to identify the best course of action. There is no one silver bullet for SEO. It takes several aspects to work together effectively in order to rank a website.

Meta Titles and Descriptions

We enhance your on-page SEO by doing a few specific things. We make sure that each page’s meta title and meta description are optimized comes first. When all of the text on the page has been distilled, you should end up with a meta title between 10 and 70 characters. The meta title should contain the main keywords you want to rank for. On the search engine results page for Google and other search engines, users will see your Meta Title and Meta Description.

We ensure that your real estate website’s meta titles and meta descriptions are well written, as they can significantly impact your site’s rankings. The title should contain keywords, and a meta description should accurately summarize what the page is about. Making sure your metadata is well written can help persuade readers to click on your site rather than on one of your competitors. The number of characters in a meta varies depending on the platform, but generally speaking, it should be between 160 and 300. Likewise, the title should be less than 60 characters.

Mobile Responsiveness and Site Speed

 This should be included in your website audit, but it’s so crucial that we felt it warranted its own section. The majority of internet traffic globally now comes from mobile devices. Thus we create your real estate website with mobile users in mind.

The process of designing a website to be mobile-first is a bit different than designing a website for traditional viewing. The site is designed for mobile devices and then modified to be viewed on a desktop computer. This may not seem like a big deal, but it can make a big difference in how the website is designed. Another important consideration is website speed. This is especially important on mobile devices, where loading times can really affect the user experience.

SEO for IDX Listings

Since some real estate listings are available on many websites, it is essential to ensure that your website’s listings are presented in the most exciting and user-friendly way possible. This can be done using IDX or a VOW to display listings on your website. Doing this will ensure that your website’s visitors will have an enjoyable browsing experience. Additionally, optimizing your website for SEO will help you rank higher in search engine results pages, bringing more visitors to your website. RETS feeds from the local MLS are a great way to get high-quality listings onto your website. By using RETS feeds, you can be sure that your website’s listings are always up-to-date.

As a real estate broker, you want to ensure that your IDX listings differ from those of other brokers in your area. We do this by custom IDX display or supplementing the IDX data with other third-party data. Another way to avoid duplicate material when utilizing IDX is to put the IDX property listings on a subdomain of the main website.

Backlinks from Authoritative Real Estate Websites

There are many ways to get backlinks to your real estate website, but not all of them are created equal. The better the backlink, the more authority and relevance the site linked to you have. Too many links from low-quality websites can ruin your site’s ranking in search results. However, if you establish a profile page on some of the most popular real estate websites, like Realtor.com or Zillow, you will get very little traffic in return.

Many people use the rel=nofollow element to prevent the link from passing any “link juice” to you. Some people go to great lengths to avoid having any outbound links visible on their site. Even if Zillow, a primary real estate website, were to link back to your site from one of their profile pages, it would have little-to-no impact on the authority of your real estate site.

The Best Backlinks

The best way to get links is to create great content that people will want to link to. Zillow, for example, is a site with a lot of authority. If they post an article on their blog about discount real estate brokers and include a link to your website, that link will be very powerful in helping you rank for the term “discount real estate broker.” So most of the authority is transmitted by the content from these well-known real estate websites. Creating great content is the best way to get links from these sites.

Here are a few methods we use to create and shape your backlink profile.

  • Guest Posting
  • Social Media Syndication of Original Content
  • Study Your Competitor’s Backlink Profile
  • Detecting broken links on websites you want to link to
  • Creating Citations for Local SEO
  • Content Marketing
  • Web 2.0 Sites

Creating backlinks is one of the most vital and challenging tasks for any SEO agency. Much of the work in content marketing is done to generate backlinks from other websites. This means you need engaging, high-quality content people want to link to.

Backlinks are still the most crucial factor in Google ranking, but they are more closely scrutinized than ever. A few years ago, it was enough to have many backlinks from various sources. However, today too many low-quality or spammy backlinks can hurt your search engine ranking. The authority of the linking domain is also essential.

Socially Syndicate Your Original Real Estate Content

As a successful realtor, it’s crucial to have a solid social media presence. We share a great deal of content from your real estate website on your social media platforms. By doing this, you’ll be able to better engage with your potential clients and build a stronger relationship with them.

As a real estate professional, you’ll need a Facebook Business Page, Twitter Page, and LinkedIn Profile. We help you with all of this!

Real Estate SEO: The BrokerLEAD Advantage

Hiring a Real Estate SEO Expert

When it comes to real estate SEO, hiring a professional is often the best option. Although you could attempt to do it yourself, real estate SEO’s intricacies and particular problems make this a difficult task. Additionally, due to this industry’s high degree of competition, SEO pricing may be higher than in other verticals.

At BrokerLEAD, we specialize in real estate SEO. We have the experience and knowledge necessary to optimize your website for search engines properly. However, understanding SEO and the real estate industry is not enough. When it comes to displaying real estate listing data (IDX from your MLS, for example), there are many specific standards and restrictions that must be followed. We understand all things IDX and real estate SEO related to ensure your traditional organic and local SEO for real estate works!

Our expertise includes:

  • Understanding of IDX and listings display
  • Working with listing data
  • Working with the MLS board
  • Real estate lead generation
  • REALTOR board and MLS rules and regulations
  • The real estate sales cycle
  • Real estate business models and their USP
  • What marketing works for buyers vs. sellers
  • History of real estate online marketing
  • Broker vs. agent vs. REALTOR
  • Independent brokers vs. Real estate franchises and their tool sets
  • Proficiency in real estate CRM
  • Real estate agent and broker mentality
  • Understanding of real estate websites

The real estate SEO industry is constantly changing, with Google releasing hundreds of algorithm changes yearly. It can be difficult to keep up with all of them, particularly if your online marketing partner lacks the necessary experience. Our team can help your business stay ahead of the curve. We have over two decades of experience in Google algorithm changes, online marketing, and technical competence. 

Is Real Estate SEO Hard?

Regarding SEO (search engine optimization) for real estate can be much more complicated than in other internet verticals. This is because the sector is controlled by large, national organizations like Zillow, Realtor.com, Trulia, and Homes.com. These websites have a lot of authority, and you must contend with them if you want to be successful in SEO for real estate.

You also have to compete with Real Estate Franchises like Keller Williams, Remax, and Coldwell Banker. And practically every agent has their own website. By 2021, there were approximately 2 million active real estate licenses. So it’s not an easy field to succeed in.

Search Engine Optimization for Real Estate

For over ten years, our team of SEO specialists has helped real estate businesses achieve better search engine rankings. Our focus on SEO for real estate has resulted in impressive results for our clients.

As real estate SEO professionals, we know that search engine rankings are only one part of a successful digital marketing strategy. Our comprehensive approach uses Google organic optimization and Google Ads (if needed) to generate leads immediately, while Facebook Remarketing helps to build your brand. This combination makes visitors more likely to become customers, improving your SEO in the long run.

The continual follow-up marketing on Facebook maintains your brand’s presence in the minds of potential clients long after they visit your website. 

A Digital Marketer Who Understands Real Estate

Finding the right digital marketer for your real estate business is essential. At BrokerLEAD, we have years of experience in the real estate industry, from sales and brokerage ownership to training and technology development for some of the largest real estate brands in the country. We also understand what it takes to be successful online and can help your business dominate the search engines for significant real estate keywords.

If you’re interested in working with a team of experienced professionals who know how to market real estate effectively, fill out the form below. We would be happy to discuss our real estate SEO services with you and see how we can help you grow your business.

 

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